Button: I’ll be even stronger in 2010

Jenson Button has said that the struggle he endured last year to win his first world championship will help him in his title defence in 2010.

In 2009, after dominating the first half of the season, he struggled in the second half, but still hung on to take the 2009 title. However, he has said that the lessons have been learned by him and Brawn, and these lessons have been taken on board as he goes up against Lewis Hamilton this year.

At the Autosport International, he said:

“Because we were in such a position of leading the championship by quite a few points, we were too cautious. We didn’t want anything to go wrong.”

“We were too cautious for the situation, although you can say too cautious and we still ended up winning the championship. I think we should have been a little bit more aggressive with our strategy, and also myself, I should have been more aggressive.”

“It was a position I had never been in before. It was something I really learned through the season, and it is amazing that you learn so much when you are fighting for a championship – a championship that is so important to you. So it was a very up and down season, and when we got to Brazil, and also a couple of races before Brazil, we realised we started to need to get aggressive again and we really had to fight for this.”

Also, he has supported his decicion of moving to McLaren, as he says that he wanted a new challenge in his career. He also added that this new challenge will help him for this season.

“I have been working for 21 years to achieve my goal – but yes, I am massively hungry. When I won the world championship in Brazil I was looking for something else. I thought I have achieved what I set out to do, but what do I do now? It is a very strange situation to be in, because you should enjoy the moment but it is very, very difficult to because you are always thinking too far ahead that you have to be careful of.”

“I knew that moving to a new team and moving to Vodafone McLaren Mercedes would be a real challenge for me, and racing alongside Lewis, but it is a challenge I am so excited about. I am putting so much effort into making this work. This is the most important thing for me at the moment.”